Catastrophe 23

Chapter 1: Enter a New World

The end of the world happened on a Thursday. It was an end to normalcy, the concept of which we have seen precious little of ever since. There was precious little in terms of any actual warning. All that I can tell you is that it happened all too quickly. The world could not have possibly braced for the chaos that has since ensued.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm dead. I wonder if I'm dead and all of this has just been a figment of an unoriginal imagination. The cynical part of me would've preferred that. After all, anything would be better than the nightmare of December 28, 2023. It would mean that all the sacrifices, the heartaches, and the losses would have been for nothing. For every friend that I've gained and lost, for all the love wrenched away from my arms, I would give anything to turn back to the time before this madness. I wish it all never happened.

When historians document the events of December 28, 2023, it would become known as the day that the world changed forever. All across the globe, the very end of reality as we know it unveiled before us. Life. Death. And everything in between. We have called this day the Catastrophe. I'm willing to bet that a name like that sticks around.

After all, it's the day that pokemon came to life.

[December 28, 2023. Seattle, USA.]

"-as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is offering no statements on the nature of this latest astronomical development, several contrasting opinions have surfaced to explain the irregular movement patterns of this impending meteor shower..."

"Holt?" A voice tore my attention away from the screen. One of the perks of working for the dying print industry was the amount of time spent just watching the news. This, of course, had the adverse effect of me-not-paying-attention to anything else going on. I figured that with the rise of iPad babies in the workforce, my few sins could be forgiven. What was the point of having all these shiny new toys if I couldn't slack off and watch TV for hours and hours?

"That sounds good, Miranda. Check back with me in the morning? I'll have a proposal for you by lunchtime," I replied. Smooth-talking and nonspecific, the very spirit of the Pacific Northwest.

"How does me saying 'Please see me in my office' have anything to do with a goddamned proposal, Mr. Locke?" Miranda asked. While her words were rather serious, she had a sort of half-smile smack across her face. We were good friends, in spite the fact that she was also my boss. Ever since she helped out a troubled seventeen-year-old kid, homeless and desperate for anyone to give him a chance. Miranda Stone was a special kind of soul, one of the few people I actually trusted in my life. It didn't hurt that we shared a twisted sort of humor.

After waving my co-workings farewell, I followed Miranda to her Lair of Doom also known as the Local Ed. Office. Supposedly the Ed. stood for Edition but the manager before Miranda was named Eduardo, which put a wrench in our speculations. A picture of Eduardo himself was burnt into the drywall, likely there since before I even arrived at the Seattle Herald.

I snatched up a CLIF bar from the break table before knocking on her door. It was always safer to knock, in case any of the higher-ups had decided to barge in for an impromptu work meeting. I peeled open the blueberry energy bar and chewed off a bit of the top while waiting for Miranda to give me the go-ahead.

"Come on in, Holt," she said. When I shrugged past the door, my boss was sifting through some old crème colored folders. I'd have been fooled if she wasn't peeking past the paperwork to look me in the eyes. Or rather, the CLIF bar in my hand. "Took your sweet time coming here, I see."

"A man's gotta eat, Miranda. I've been busting my ass trying to get details on the Fremont Flasher. Twenty-four seven, on the job. You really should be thanking me."

"His name is Pier McBath. Age fifty-one and a plumber in Renton. The Times did a flash piece on him about two hours ago. You're late if you were gunning for an exclusive."

I groaned at the anticlimactic reveal. I'd been working at that particular piece since October. The Fremont Flasher wasn't nearly as headline-grabbing as the Green River Killer, of course, but it was still a lot of legwork trying to track him down. An exclusive would've gone a long way towards a promotion.

"Anything else you wanted to talk about?" I asked.

She plucked a manila envelope from her correspondence cabinet. The Seattle Herald logo was stamped tightly onto the fold, indicating that it had yet to be opened. "This came for you… sort of. I haven't opened it myself. I figured I'd give you the honor."

I raised an eyebrow at her remark. "You do know that mail theft is a crime, right?"

"Take it up with Legal. They'll type up a pretty report and then I'll tear it up. Heck, I'll let you watch if you really want to."

Deliberately rolling my eyes in some semblance of defiance, I neatly accepted the envelope and tried to make sense of what it might contain. It wasn't very heavy, so any hopes of large wads of hush money were instantly quashed. Journalism pays, but it rarely pays well.

I ripped off the top and poured out three sheets of paper stapled together. The header read Human Resources which instantly caught my eye. Despite all my earlier cockiness, I briefly wondered whether Miranda had finally decided to fire me after all. Her best reporter, none the less! All my building anxiety washed away after skimming through the rest of the cover page.

Internal Employee Transfer/Promotion – Locke, Holt J.

[Production Assistant] to [Production Junior Manager]

Instead of calmly embracing this delightful new development, I promptly shrieked like a high schooler asked out to the school dance. In true juvenile fashion, I also dropped the contents of the envelope onto Miranda's desk, knocking over her dead cactus. "What the fuck!"

Miranda just grinned at my reaction, repositioning her fallen plant. "Shit, I should've been recording that. You scream like a little girl, you know?"

"What- How the- What the hell is this, Miranda?" I snatched up the papers, albeit with extreme delicacy. If this was anything like her April Fool's prank – a fake White House correspondence dinner invitation – then I was seriously ready to throw down with the boss lady herself.

"This? Not much. There was a board meeting last Tuesday. Santiago is replacing Yelnats so we needed someone to fill in as my deputy. I wrote you a pretty sweet letter of rec, kiddo. You're officially my bitch now."

I reached out to embrace her before stopping myself, realizing that physical intimacy might reflect poorly in the work environment. Lord knew that the paper had enough legal issues to deal with without me tacking on my own. Instead, I held Miranda's two hands with my own, shaking them with as much enthusiasm as my body could muster. "Have I told you how much I love you?"

"Careful, Holt. If I were ten years younger then I might've actually believed you," Miranda joked. "You deserve this. You work harder than anyone. Your writing isn't half bad and most of your coworkers rather like you. I'm sure you want to give 'em the good news yourself," she said, waving me towards the door. "Just be sure to get your things all packed up. I want you to take the rest of the day off so that you can wake up bright and early tomorrow as my lapdog. Sorry- junior manager."

Shaking her hand one more time and blowing a very comical kiss in her direction, I sped out of Miranda's office and made a beeline towards my cubicle. I knew that Eduardo and Molly would want to hear about my promotion, for sure. If could catch Maria Santiago, the current junior manager, then that was an added bonus.

The television was still going on and on about the meteor from earlier. I caught a glimpse of the word 'impact' but it disappeared as quickly as I had laid eyes on it. Eduardo was eating a Snack Pack pudding cup, chocolate and not the superior tapioca flavor. This was absolutely beta behavior and I made a mental note to berate him later for it.

"Hey Eddie. You know where Molly's at?" I asked him. His mouth was full of pudding so he used his tiny pink spoon to point at our friend and colleague who was actually doing work at her own desk. "Sorry, didn't see you there. I've got some news for you two."

"Is this about the meteor strike? If it is, then we've got a bet going on right now. My money's on alien invaders. Molly thinks it has something to do with global warming," Eduardo said after finally swallowing the dessert.

"Figures. Neither of you guys have a STEM background," I joked.

"Holt, you didn't even go to college," Molly said. If it were anyone else, I might have been slightly miffed at the dig. However, Molly was one of the few people I could take this kind of banter from. The fact that she was one of the only people not to belittle me for my less-than-stellar educational background? Brownie points on brownie points in my book.

"Yet I'm proud to announce that as of December 29th, I am officially..." I brandished the transfer papers in front of my like an Olympic medal. "... Miranda's junior manager!"

"Shit," Eduardo said, grabbing the documents with his grubby little copy editor fingers. He flipped through the three pages with the speed of someone who proofreads dozens of articles a day. "This looks pretty legit, Molly. You wanna change the bet to guessing who Holt bribed for this gig?"

Molly, who'd gotten up from her desk to stand next to us, punched Eddie in the shoulder. The resounding thud made it pretty clear what her thoughts were on his playful insinuation. "Congrats, Holt. I'm so proud of you. If there's anyone that deserves a promotion then it's you."

We were mostly ignoring the television for now, so I turned it off. A rare astronomical occurrence was nothing to scoff at. However, I was more concerned with what kind of party to throw after the rest of my friends got out of work. The three of us chatted about potential venues and other silly stuff for a good while, before Miranda started giving us the evil eye through the window of her office.

"Duty calls," Eduardo grumbled, before tossing the empty pudding cup into the waste bin. Molly promised to make some calls for the party. I myself grabbed an empty bank box from the storage closet before tossing all the contents of my desk inside of it. There wasn't much, since most of my work was digitized. Just a few trinkets, pictures of the gang and I. My eyes brushed across a dusty old photograph, the only one I had of my life before Seattle. Me proudly holding up a small plastic trophy from an old video game competition back in Atlanta, a Nintendo in hand.

I snorted, tossing it in the trash instead of in my box. I'd grown tired of Pokemon a while ago. It made no sense to hold onto the picture for as long as I had. I recalled the promise I made to myself when I left home all those years ago. 'Never look back.' A nagging feeling was forming in my gut, however. I tried brushing it off as residue anxiety from my youth. Reminiscence of that period was non-conducive for my mental health after all.

Even as I was leaving the building, it was hard to shake off that weird feeling. The memory of me with such unfiltered joy in my eyes, holding that silly little Pikachu prize like it was the honor of a lifetime. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that it was, at least for me. With the shit that was going on at home, Pokemon was my only form of escape.

As I was turning the corner towards the light rail station, I figured that I might splurge and treat myself to a burger and some greasy ass fries over at Dick's. Or maybe a slice or two at Pagliacci's?

A giant swarm of pigeons were barreling past pedestrians ahead of me. I'd never seen them so active at once, especially in Seattle. In fact, they looked like they were fleeing something, an enthusiastic child or a motorcycle perhaps. I tried not to pay it too much attention, except for that lingering feeling of anxiety. Bubbling, churning, overflowing-

Rumbling. I could feel the ground beneath me tremble, shivering with the tension of a hundred thousand steel coils twisting like snakes. It gradually grew larger and more intense, the smallest of quivers building into a wicked tectonic crescendo. My knees buckled, giving out almost instantly from the shock waves. I had to hold out both arms in front of me just to avoid slamming face-first into the pavement.

A flash of hot searing pain lapped across my back, almost like it was prying through my skin and injected directly into my nerves. I stumbled backwards, trying to figure out what was burning up, when I heard an explosion coming from the east.

In the distance across Lake Washington, where once stood the city of Bellevue, was now a giant cloud of black gas pouring out of the ground. From my vantage point, I couldn't make outwhat had happened. My thoughts immediately turned to a potential missile strike from North Korea or something. Just my luck that World War III would kick off on the day that I get promoted.

Then in a stroke of recollection, the news that I had so blatantly ignored came back to me all at once. Meteor shower. Bellevue, a city that I had been to so many times before, had been wiped off the map by a fucking meteor.

I broke into a run back towards the Herald. Even the tiniest tremor coursed through my legs, making it almost impossible to gain any real speed. On top of that, I was forced to duck underneath doorways and arches whenever I heard the shattering of a window up above. It wasn't like I was gonna risk having my eyes gouged out by chancing a peek skywards.

Cars swerved into the curb and into each other, giant husks of metal smashing into anything in their path. An unfortunate pedestrian was caught between a Lexus and a streetlight, the impact making a sick crunching noise. I tried to avert my eyes but something rose in the back of my throat, which I quickly hurled out onto the sidewalk.

When I finally felt well enough to keep going, I steeled myself to at least check and see if there was anything I could do for the dead man. His eyes were still open, staring at everything and nothing at the same time. I carefully walked around the streetlight. peering over at the driver's side. Empty. Whoever the owner was, they had hightailed out of there as soon as they could.

9-1-1. I knew that I had to call somebody, a professional. I whipped out my phone and jabbed the emergency services button. No service, the top of my screen read. On top of everything I'd just witnesses, all the chaos and panic surrounding me, I was unable to get a signal in the middle of fucking Seattle.

"Somebody, help!" I shouted out. My head spun around in circles, trying to spot anyone that could figure out what to do. There was no point. Everyone was either fleeing the scene or getting into even worse accidents.

Over by a Starbucks, a woman was cradling what looked to be her son, crying and shaking his still form. He was covered in a thin layer of dark powder, which I noticed was raining down from the sky. I expected it to be something similar to volcanic ash, which was probably best not to inhale. With one sleeve, I covered my nose and mouth, while fumbling around my coat pocket for the spare KN-95 I'd been lugging around for months. Snapping it on, I surveyed the area for anything I could

Just then, I noticed a police officer running in my direction. I waved both of my arms like a lunatic, desperate tp get his attention. Instead of stopping, however, he unceremoniously shoved me to the side and kept going on his way, which nearly sent me toppling into the dead man's corpse. I had to fight to keep myself from vomiting again.

I was jolted out of my shock by another, smaller, explosion. This one seemed like it was coming from the skies rather than by a meteor. If there was something up above then the black smoke that coated the clouds was making it hard for me to tell. Speaking of the smoke, almost all of the pigeons I'd seen before were now lying on the ground, twitching and convulsing. The same black powder that was on the child was on the birds as well. I was lucky enough not to be breathing the stuff, a reprieve that nobody else on the street could afford.

Within the blackness up above, I could make out a single streak of silver cutting through the heavens. It was as though something had torn through the murkiness, something like a fighter jet I surmised. The strangest part was that the streak was moving away from the site of the Bellevue meteor, almost as though it had ricocheted away.

I made a note of it in my head but started forcing myself to move. One thing was clear: if the situation was this bad, then my friends back at the Herald might be in danger. I knew that I couldn't live with myself if Eddie or Molly were lying injured somewhere.

Or Miranda. Especially not Miranda, I thought.

The trip back to the office went a lot faster since I'd ditched my bank box back at the site of the car crash. Despite having run several blocks to get to the Herald, adrenaline was keeping me on my toes without stopping. Once I reached the door, I carefully peered into the main lobby, only to see above twenty or so people staring back at me like I were a ghost.

"HOLT! What the fuck is going on outside?" Ryan, one of the custodial staff, asked.

"I need to get upstairs. Right now," I told him. He nodded but gestured towards the main floor's security room.

"You need to check the news first. Something's messed up man. Did you see it?"

Torn between continuing onwards to my office, I decided to heed Ryan's words and followed him into the security room. There were about a dozen or so television screens, showing the full extent of the wreckage to the main sectors. To my dismay, the footage for my floor was out of commission, merely a static screen awaiting me.

Ryan was frantically raising the volume of the news channel on one of the screens. His eyes were slightly out of focus, as though he were a man possessed. Finally, after fumbling with the remote, he managed to set it up for me to see what was going on.

"-the meteor appears to be headed for Japan. The most recent estimations place the point of impact in the heart of Tokyo. Experts agree that some form of aerial countermeasure would be the best course of action. Whether that comes in the form of missile interception will be decided before due time. And-"

"Huh? What's that, Jim?"

"… Is that right? Instead of just one point of impact, there appears to be..."

"… God help us all."

I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Footage of major cities across the world, fragments of a larger meteor splitting off and crashing into the ground. Fire. There was so much fire everywhere. People were burning, screaming away for some salvation that would never come.

Then there were the charred remains of where the space rocks had made their mark unto the earth. Locally, there was Bellevue, the one that had hit closest to home. It all happened too fast. Too fast for it to make any sense at all. Granted, I knew next to nothing about astrophysics or whatever but I was pretty sure that there had to have been some kind of advance warning system in place for an event of this scale. Meteors didn't just crash into Earth without NASA having plenty of advance warning.

Except, that was the reality of this catastrophe. We were warned far too late. Hundreds if not thousands of lives were lost in the wake of the crashes. The growing knot from before twisted my stomach until it became hard to breathe. I had to tear my eyes away from the screen before I lost what was left of my stomach's contents.

"Ryan. Do you know if..." I began to say. Ryan cut me off with a curt shake of his head.

"Only a handful of people have come down so far. The shaking stopped not too long ago, so I'm imagining that anyone with some goddamn sense stays put for now. None of our lines are working right, so we can't expect medical support to get here anytime s-" The rest of what he was trying to say died in his lips as he stared at something behind me.

I turned around to see what was going on. An office succulent, one that Sheila had brought with her when she joined the custodial crew, suddenly started convulsing madly. Its outer leaves withered away, turning into a flaky dust that flew around the potted plant. I could spot the same black dust from outside gradually coating the leaves that remained.

"Get back!" Ryan screamed, covering his mouth. With a single kick, he sent the plant flying off its place on Sheila's desk and into the wall of the security room. The ceramic pot fractured into pieces as the soil burst out all over the floor. A sickly yellow powder fluttered down as well, which made me very glad for the mask I was wearing.

Making sure that nobody had actually breathed in that foreign substance, I gestured for Ryan to make his way out of the building while I pried open the door for the emergency stairwell. With the emergency lights enveloping the room with a reddish hue, the entire situation felt dangerous. There wasn't anyone coming downstairs, at least, which emboldened my next course of action.

I started making my way up the flight of stairs, listening carefully for any footsteps coming down the other way. There was some shaking, signs of structural damage to the entire building. Even in my haste I wondered when the last time our building had gotten its earthquake safety inspection. Knowing our stingy board of executives, I did not have particularly high hopes.

Once I reached the eight floor, I finally ran into someone else that had been stuck in the building. Jackson, from the Legal Department, was desperately trying to push open the door to the stairwell of his floor. The earthquake had managed to twist the doorway in such a way that even with three people working hard to pry it apart, it didn't seem to budge. Luckily, I was on the other side.

With a bit of a running start, I kicked the half-contorted metal door four times around the handle. I didn't want to risk bringing down the ceiling right above us, but my attack managed to finally break free the door itself. Immediately, I was swarmed by the dozen or so people who had been trying to escape, leaving only me and Jackson on the eight floor stairway.

"Thanks, Holt," Jackson sputtered, struggling to catch his breath. His forehead was drenched in sweat and he'd taken off his suit jacket despite it being a brisk December. We worked together at the Herald, yet we were also neighbors, which made for a somewhat closer workplace relationship. "Come on, let's get out of here."

I shook my head. Helping out the legal department was an unplanned detour, I explained to him. He understood what I'd meant by that and volunteered to stick around on the first floor in case I needed him. I then continued up the stairs, passing floor by floor until I'd reached the twelfth and penultimate story.

The door was not stuck like Jackson's so I simply turned the handle and made my way inside. Most of the people had either made their way downstairs already or were crouched under their desks, quiet as could be. Uncertainty at what was going on had frozen the lot of them, stopping them from trying to escape the relative safety of the office.

Yet I could feel somehow that the building had been destabilized enough. It wouldn't be able to bear the brunt of another tremor. So with the last of my remaining breath, I started barking at everyone to head downstairs, gesturing widely at the emergency stairwell. Most of the employees took this as their sign to scramble out of the office floor like a herd of panicked deer.

Most of them except for one familiar face.

"Molly!" I shouted out, reaching my friend. Her red hair was covered in dust, as well as her face and blouse. Two streaks ran down her face, dust-free from where the tears had cleared the way. She locked eyes with me and stumbled into my open arms, sobbing.

"Holt!" she cried, clutching onto my shirt. "Holt, you need- you need to..." she started coughing as the dust invaded her lungs. "Eduardo and Miranda. You have to help them. PLEASE!"

At the mention of our other two friends, my ears perked up and I could feel my heart skip several beats. They were still alive, I garnered, yet they were also in some kind of peril. Since Molly was in no shape to elaborate, I gestured for her to lay back underneath my old desk and to wait for me to return. I then turned and sprinted towards Miranda's office, where Molly had directed me towards.

There was some kind of scuffle going on inside, from what I could hear. Eduardo was shouting all manner of profanities, while I couldn't make out anything from Miranda. As to who Eddie was apparently fighting, I could not tell. Instead, I busted open the fire hatchet case and removed the ax from inside. With this safeguard in my hands, I opened the door to Miranda's office to the most bizarre sight I could have never fathomed.

Miranda was sprawled on the floor, suit in tatters and bleeding all over. Next to her, Eduardo was fiercely slamming a desk lamp down on a green mound of some kind of plant the size of a basketball. His own jacket was covered in small needle-like pins while his forehead had streaks of blood running down all the way down to his chin.

"EDUARDO!" I yelled.

If he heard me he didn't show, as he kept on beating the shit out of the green thing. I had to grab his arms and drag him away. Eyeing Miranda, I could tell that she was still breathing at the very least. Thank God. Just what the hell was going on? Did Eduardo snap and attack our boss?

"What happened to Miranda?" I asked, shaking him by the shirt. He was peppered with the pins across his chest, bleeding from some of them. His eyes seemed wild, frantically moving between me and Miranda's desk. When he still didn't answer, I took my left hand and clapped him across the cheekbone. This seemed to shake him out of the stupor.

"Miranda?"

"Yes, asshole. What the fuck's going on. Why is she hurt?" I demanded.

"The plant… The plant is alive..." he muttered, shivering. Tears were forming in his eyes and a bubble of clear snot protruded out of a nostril. He was quite a sight, scared out of his wits and just barely hanging on from the looks of it. There was something I wasn't quite catching, something more to this picture. As for what the fuck that was, I hadn't the faintest-

The plant is alive.

I spun over to the remains of the green thing that Eduardo had been relentlessly smashing to pulp. A small flower in the shape of a crown, painting this wretched creature in a twisted light. A grimace, eerily humanoid yet devoid of any known human emotion. It was as though I was staring into the ethereal, yet I could feel that this was all too real. Cacnea, the Pokemon.

An actual fucking Pokemon. Not something you'd expect to see when the day of judgement arrives at your doorstep. I was too tired to be shocked, yet adrenaline kept me moving enough to help ease Miranda into a more comfortable position.

Her entire left side was covered in wicked looking spikes, likely from the devil in front of us, I presumed. I had to be extra careful not to jostle her too much, lest the injuries became even more severe.

The cacnea was still moving, albeit barely. It seemed to be on its last legs- well, roots- yet its eyes were still glaring daggers into Miranda's broken form. Those eyes... they were full of scorn, the purest hatred I could never have imagined. I could sense that given the opportunity, it wouldn't hesitate to finish what it had started: the process of murdering one of my closest friends in the world.

Yet I figured that at the moment, it was harmless. And I fully intended to keep it that way.

Miranda coughed, a sign that she was stirring. One of her eyes was pinned shut with a particularly nasty looking needle. I was no medical expert, yet even I could tell that she wouldn't be seeing out of it anytime soon.

"Holt?" she managed to squeak out, a trickle of blood escaping her bruised lips.

"Yes, darling?" I squeezed her hand, letting her know that I was there even if she couldn't quite see me. "I'm here. I'm here, Mira. How are you feeling?"

"The fucking plant. It got me good," she said. "It came to life."

"I know. I always told you to water it. See what karma brought you, huh?" I tried to tease. The words felt hollow coming out of my mouth, but Miranda chuckled nonetheless.

"D- do you know what's going on?" she asked. She blinked a few times with her good eye, which made it more of a wink, turning her neck slightly to stare at the heap of green muck on the floor.

"I'll try and explain what I can, Miranda. But I gotta take care of this first. Do you, uh, do you still smoke?"

"You've been telling me to quit for years now," Miranda said.

"Shh... Where's your lighter?" I asked her.

She pointed towards her jacket, which had born the brunt of the cacnea's onslaught. I felt around its pockets, careful not to prick myself on one of the needles, fishing out a bright pink Playboy lighter that had thankfully escaped a stabbing. Wasting no time, I flicked the metal piece a few times until the flame caught on, then crawled over to the plant.

Its beady eyes were just so full of hate. Hate for me, hate for its owner, hate for the cruel world that had spawned its miserable existence. Granted, most of it was just hate for Miranda. She didn't have the greenest of thumbs, but life as a regular cactus must have been pretty terrible for that kind of visceral reaction.

I placed the tip of the fire directly against the cacnea.

"EYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" An unholy shriek pierced the room as the cacnea burst into flames. It was probably extremely dehydrated, even more so than your regular desert buds. All I could think about was how haunting that scream sounded as it died a gruesome and fiery death.

And from that office of the Herald, that precious place I'd just begun to call home, I realised that my world had taken a very different turn than from what I was expecting. Eduardo lay shivering next to me, cradling himself as though something precious in him had finally snapped. Miranda was no better, arguably worse, bleeding out on the floor of her own office. In front of the three of us, Miranda's large window, cracks strewn across like spiderwebs, showed us a Seattle unlike anything we'd seen before.

The sky was a blood red, consuming everything in its horrific light. Creatures taller than busses prowled about the streets, wreaking havoc with each awesome step. A orange lizard, barely the size of a fire hydrant, was scaling about the windows of the building in front of us, spewing wisps of smoke from its maw and a wad of flames from its tail.

Instead of the birds that we had known, flocks of new species sped past our sight, swirling about in a synchronised manner, scouring the street for fresh prey. Pidgey. Pidove. Fucking Pidove.

Something was oh so very wrong. I had no fucking clue what was going on, except that one thing was for sure.

Such a fresh hell it was, is now, and forever shall be. Welcome to the world of Pokemon.

A/N: And so comes December 28, 2023. The day in my story wherein Pokemon come to life. Let us begin anew this journey with Holt, and find ourselves on a path lightly treaded yet never truly explored. I have returned. Dom Noct, truly yours, and in the Korean miltary.